Those Voices
by MissWitchx
Summary: For over a decade, Sirius never felt happiness. Occasionally he'd be able to imagine the feeling, but even then it was never real. More often than not he'd feel it being sucked from him by the Dementors quicker than a heartbeat. But Sirius never gave up. Hope was the only thing he could cling on to in Azkaban, and hope is the only thing he has when he finally plans his escape.


**A/N: **I don't own anything you recognise; Harry Potter belongs to JKR. This was somewhat inspired by _Those Voices_ from AVPS. The song and lyrics belongs to Team Starkid.

I don't usually do this, but I recommend listening to _Immortal Love_ by Killigrew whilst reading. It's an instrumental piano and violin piece that really helped me convey the atmosphere when I was writing this.

Okay, unless you are hosting a challenge/comp, you can just skip to the story now. Enjoy :)

**Written for: On This Day comp **[July 31st, angst, timing, myriad]; **Three Prompts comp **[Sirius Black, fireplace, "I think you've been sitting here for way too long."]; **Spells, Charms and Curses comp **[Muffliato, Sirius Black]; **Birthday comp **[April, Latin, write about a room]; **Quotes for all Occasions comp **[Hope].

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**Those Voices**

_"Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have."_

_- H. Jackson Brown, Jr_

**31st July 1993**

_Those voices…_

Long, rattling breaths peeled around the walls – walls that seemed to move closer together with every passing day – and rang painfully in Sirius's head.

That's all he ever heard. Those voices. The voices of the Dementors: if one could even refer to the noise as such. The word 'voice' suggested something human, and that was something the guards of Azkaban most certainly were not. They were beings, or perhaps they were non-beings. Sirius had never really figured that out.

It was hard to think of anything other than the Dementors as he sat wasting away in the box of misery he called 'home'; the cell in which he had been held for an innumerable amount of years. There were just too many of them. They were like an army. A myriad.

A myriad of despair: that just about summed them up.

Those voices were slightly different in tones to one another, Sirius had noticed. But together they created off-key harmonies in the most depressing orchestra in the world, and perhaps even the underworld. For so many years, that was, and remained to be, the symphony of Sirius's life.

For over a decade, Sirius never felt happiness. Occasionally he'd be able to muster enough focus and energy to imagine the feeling, but even then it was never real. More often than not he'd feel it being sucked from him by the Dementors quicker than a heartbeat before he could fully register what it felt like.

But Sirius never gave up. Hope was the only thing he could cling on to. Hope was the only thing the Dementors could never take away from him. Perhaps that was why he hadn't yet gone insane in there like so many others.

He continued to imagine what happiness felt like by remembering his Hogwarts days with the people he loved the most in the world. This was no easy feat. The powers of the Dementors ensured that thoughts of James, Remus, and Lily were always turned back around on him eventually. Memories of playing pranks on Professors and Slytherins transformed into images of the day Sirius was arrested: the day he was falsely labelled as a murderer and a traitor.

This time, when Sirius closed his eyes and focused, he made a breakthrough. For some reason, on this occasion, he could almost imagine his friend's voices instead of those of the Dementors. Thinking of real memories always backfired, so this time Sirius took a different approach and imagined his own.

He thought of the Gryffindor common room. The warm and welcoming space that was a world away from the dark walls that now surrounded him. Gryffindor tower had been like a true home, Sirius realised. The cell could never be 'home' no matter how long he remained a prisoner there.

He envisioned himself lying stretched out on one of the plush sofas beside the crackling fireplace, laughing at some crude joke told by James and yet, he had no idea what laughter felt like. Sirius knew what it looked like though, and that was enough. He continued to focus on the scene he had conjured, lest the influence of the Dementors rip it away from him.

_James was laughing along at his own joke too. He was visiting the common room with Lily like they always did when the Head's dormitory became too boring and lonely._

_Lily removed her head from his shoulder, looked up at him and rolled her emerald eyes. _

"_You're so immature, Potter," she said. _

"_I concur," Remus spoke up from an armchair opposite them as he continued to scribble one of Sirius's Potions essays._

"_Aw come on Evans, where's your sense of humour?" James replied, flashing a cocky grin at her._

"_Excuse me but I have a very good sense of humour, thank you very much," Lily smacked James's arm lightly. "It's just at a classier level than yours."_

"_Hey – my joke was classy!" James protested, running a hand through his messy hair._

_Lily arched a brow. "A joke involving Dungbombs and Professor Dumbledore could never be classy."_

"_Are you implying that our headmaster is not classy, Lily?" James asked, deliberately missing her point. "That's an awful thing to say, and from the Head Girl, no less."_

"_Shut up," Lily said. She craned her neck upwards to give James a quick kiss on the lips, taking him completely by surprise and thereby silencing him. "See? Works every time," she smiled and nuzzled her head into the crook of James's neck once again._

"_I'd say a Silencing charm would be more amusing," Sirius commented from the sofa._

"_Hey!" James pointed a finger at Sirius. "Do you want me to transfigure a cage and lock you in it for being a bad dog again? 'Cause I'll do it," he grinned._

"Oh Merlin, no," Sirius shuddered at the memory, both in the made-up scenario and in reality.

It was a harmless prank at the time, but now that Sirius was literally living life as a caged animal, there was little humour behind it.

The voices of his friends abruptly dissolved back into the rattling ones of the Dementors as that one negative thought crossed his mind, and the scene melted away. All Sirius felt was emptiness. He knew he'd never hear the voices of his friends again. James and Lily were both dead, and if by some miracle Sirius made it out of the prison alive, he doubted Remus would speak to him. He still believed Sirius to be the traitor. The natural sorrow that accompanied those thoughts was only enhanced a thousand times over with the lingering presence of the Dementors.

Sirius sighed in defeat. It wasn't like the fantasy was anything like his time at Hogwarts, anyway. Someone was missing from what he'd just envisioned. Peter: the snivelling, traitorous rat. There were always four of them until Lily and James became a couple in seventh year. None of them really liked Peter all that much. He was the one who always backed out of pranks at the last second and the one who'd snitch on them to the Professors.

Sirius glanced around his pitiful cell; the four-walled box. He wanted nothing more to knock down one of the walls and get out. If only he had his wand. Then again, magic would do little good with so many Dementors lurking around. They practically sucked everything out of a wizard. Happiness. Magic. Life.

_Yes_, Sirius thought. _That wall is definitely the 'Peter': the one link that no one would really miss once cut out of the equation. _

He pondered this for a moment and felt himself somehow become more depressed when he noted that the entire prison was a cruel and taunting metaphor. In his heart of hearts he included Peter as part of his friendship group, reflecting how he was trapped between four walls in the heart of the prison. The truth was that Peter had never really belonged. He betrayed them. All of them. And so there remained three 'true' Marauders: himself, James and Remus. Just as there were three exterior walls of Azkaban.

Sirius refused to wholly succumb to the dark isolation again, and tried desperately to return to his fantasy world. A violent shiver passed through Sirius when a Dementor floated past the door, but he didn't give up. He tried to change how he heard the inhuman breaths the creatures expelled.

"I think you've been sitting here for way too long." Sirius hoped to hear James's cocky voice telling him to get up off the sofa in Gryffindor Tower. For a moment he was convinced he'd succeeded in returning to his faux-memories, but in the beat of a heart the voice faded, and all Sirius heard were the Dementors. Again.

He let out a hollow, cheerless laugh. Perhaps he _was_ going insane, after all. Maybe those words, that voice, hadn't been James's, but his own. Maybe he was telling _himself_ that he had been sitting in there, in the cell, for too long. Whoever it was, they were right.

Sirius was unaware of exactly how long he had been stuck there, and suddenly he felt the need to know the precise time. He requested to see a copy of the _Daily Prophet _under the pretence of missing doing the crossword puzzles, and was utterly baffled when the excuse seemed to work. His eyes went straight to the date when he had the paper – the one connection to the outside world – in his bony hands.

_July 31__st__ 1993._

He did a double take. Surprisingly enough, it was the day and month that grasped his attention over the year. He'd been in Azkaban for twelve goddam years, and all because of Peter. That angered Sirius to the core, but the date made a sense of hope build up inside him instead of depressing him even more like he had anticipated.

It was Harry's thirteenth birthday.

Sirius remembered the day Harry was born well. He remembered that the boy inherited James's messy black hair and Lily's striking green eyes. Sirius was determined not to dwell on those thoughts for too long for fear that the Dementors would taint them like they did to so many other memories. Harry was the only remaining piece of James and Lily left in the world.

He had hope that it was significant that he just so happened to request to see the paper on this date. It was, perhaps, the only time in his life he believed in Divination and fate and all of that malarkey. He scanned through the pages, and soon, a headline caught his eye.

'_MINISTRY OF MAGIC EMPLOYEE SCOOPS GRAND PRIZE.'_

It was hardly ground-breaking news but seeing the familiar faces of Arthur and Molly Weasley in the accompanying picture made Sirius's heart contract painfully in his chest. He had a feeling that if misery and sorrow right didn't surround him, then he'd be smiling.

But he hadn't smiled in twelve years. It was impossible to smile genuinely in Azkaban.

Sirius scanned the picture of the happy, smiling Weasley family with a numb indifference. He paused briefly on Molly and Arthur's youngest child – their daughter – who reminded Sirius of Lily if he pictured a colour version of the sepia photograph, in which the girl would have the signature red locks of the family.

Just as the omnipresent loneliness and sorrow threatened to drive Sirius to tears as he looked at the image, he felt his heart freeze over for a second when he looked at the youngest Weasley son. Though on this occasion, Sirius couldn't be sure if the Dementors were the cause of it.

There, sitting on the boy's shoulder, was a rat. It may have been twelve years, but Sirius identified the creature in the photograph immediately. It was Peter Pettigrew, who had apparently faked his own death and had been living in his Animagus form ever since Sirius's arrest.

He chewed on his bitten down fingernails, wondering what the significance of this was. By betraying them, Peter had obviously been working for Voldemort. Was he waiting for the wizard to rise to power again so he could rejoin him? Sirius had no idea, but what he did know was that Harry would be entering his third year at Hogwarts in September. Taking another glance at the boy who had the rat on his shoulder, Sirius thoerised that he's about the same age as his godson.

That meant that Harry would be in danger when he returned to school. If Peter had the gall to betray three of his friends then what would stop him from doing the same to James's son: The Boy Who Lived?

A ghost of a smile illuminated Sirius's face for a microsecond as he wondered what his friend would think about Harry earning such immense fame at such a young age.

"Well, what else would you expect from _my_ son?" James would smirk proudly.

For that same microsecond Sirius thought he felt something positive, or at least, something that wasn't emptiness. But then those voices rang out around the darkness of the cell again and he felt utterly helpless.

Sirius let out a whimper of despair. He so badly wanted to help Harry. He wanted to protect him like he promised James he would. But how could he? Azkaban was too heavily guarded for any man to break out of.

In a spurt of anger Sirius hurled the paper away from him, drew his knees up to his chest and buried his head into them. He started to cry; muttering apologies to James and Harry that only he and the Dementors could hear. The latter responded to him with a chorus of rattling breaths that sounded a lot like mocking laughter.

But Sirius didn't pay them much attention this time. He was too trapped in his own mind to take notice. His thoughts drifted to Harry as he wondered if he'd be anything like his father. Being thirteen now he'd no doubt be running riot booby-trapping the classrooms like James had, if so.

Sirius shuddered again as the Dementors twisted around his thoughts and he re-lived the moment he was imprisoned once again. He was forced to see that memory at least thirty times a day. At first he had been hopeful that the more he saw it, the less it would affect him. But he had been wrong. If anything, the pain just seemed to get worse.

"I think you've been sitting here for way too long."

There was that disembodied voice again. The words travelled to Sirius's ears in a whisper like a ray of hope in the darkness. They were like his own non-magical Patronus; the key to freeing himself from the mass of Dementors.

He glanced at the _Daily Prophet_ again. The date on the front page was glaring at him boldly despite being written in such small print. He'd always wanted to get out of there, but now he had a purpose for doing so. The timing was finally right.

The only question was how could he do it?

Sirius looked frantically around the cell, becoming light-headed when he moved his head too fast. He regarded the bars in the door. The spaces between them were not wide enough for a man to squeeze between despite Sirius's vast weight loss. They may however be wide enough for a dog to fit through.

He could only be thankful that the Dementors were blind and wouldn't be able to differentiate between his human form and Animagus form. He had no plan for what he'd do should he succeed in escaping. Hell, he didn't even know if he'd make it to Hogwarts alive, and he didn't know if Harry would even believe anything he said if he did.

But he had to try.

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**A/N: **Thank you for reading. I've never written Sirius before so this was a welcome challenge for me. I hope it was okay? :)


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